


precious and never to be forgotten scenes

by threefundamentaltruths



Series: a new scene opens [2]
Category: Hamilton - Miranda
Genre: AU Scenes, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Deleted Scenes, F/M, Gen, Guilt, Implied/Referenced Character Death, M/M, Parent-Child Relationship
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-04-04
Updated: 2017-04-04
Packaged: 2018-10-14 15:11:51
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 521
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10539027
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/threefundamentaltruths/pseuds/threefundamentaltruths
Summary: AU and/or deleted drabbles/scenes for he takes (and he takes and he takes).Title from a letter from Alexander Hamilton to Angelica Schuyler Church.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Title of this scene is from "It's Quiet Uptown."
> 
> Things you need to know for this AU scene:
> 
> \- This AU begins to diverge from he takes (and he takes and he takes) after Philip's birth. Eliza dies shortly after giving birth and, as historically, John does not survive the Combahee. This takes place a few years later.
> 
> \- Lizzie has been sent to Mepkin for a holiday with her father's family. This scene takes places after Angelica and Alexander have arrived at Mepkin to collect Lizzie, after having received and ignored a letter from Martha Laurens Ramsay saying that Lizzie has asked to extend the visit.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> He hasn’t seen Angelica cry since Eliza died.
> 
> He’d resented that later, the fact that she'd shed rivers for her sister and hadn’t managed a single, solitary tear for her husband.

He hasn’t seen Angelica cry since Eliza died.

 

He’d resented that later, the fact that she'd shed rivers for her sister and hadn’t managed a single, solitary tear for her husband.

 

(He threw in it in her face.

 

She threw knives in his. _Do you have any inkling that it’s your damn fault we were ever in a position to have to marry?_ )

 

Now, she's crying like her heart is breaking as she flees the room. (Like his.) He's never known her to run from confrontation, but this -

 

"I didn't mean to upset her," Mrs. Ramsay continues apologetically. "Truly I didn't. It's only that -"

 

Angelica didn’t love John the way he did, couldn’t have. Might have, someday, given the chance – there was so much to love in his dear Laurens – but she wasn’t. Yet she loves with all her heart the child that is so much him and so little her, and to hear that Lizzie could believe otherwise seems to have broken something in her.

 

He feels physically sick at the notion himself as he listens to Mrs. Ramsay's carefully worded suggestion. The request for an extended visit was bad enough, but asking that Lizzie remain at Mepkin for - _Indefinitely_ , he corrects the thought. Well, suffice to say, it is unacceptable. Beyond the pale. "Absolutely not," he snaps.

 

"It's brought us all so much joy to have Lizzie here, after losing Jack. My poor father especially. He adores her. And she's comfortable with us," Mrs. Ramsay continues gently. "She feels like she belongs -"

 

"She belongs with _us_ ," he interrupts. "With her mother -"  _And me._

 

He _made a promise_ , to care for her as a father if anything should happen to hers, and he's utterly failed to live up to it. The request had made him as fearful as John's despondent letters during his captivity, the fear of losing him too too heavy a burden to bear after the loss of Eliza, but he'd agreed all the same. He could never refuse his friend anything.

 

Then he'd promised it again, before God, when she was baptized. 

 

He'd promised it a third time, by marrying her mother, despite the stigma attached to such a marriage. 

 

And yet his promises are worthless, because sometimes it hurts to look at her.

 

At least in Philip he doesn’t have to see Eliza, not really. He feels her, in Philip's kind heart, in his gentle way with his new sibling, in the moments Philip demands his attention and does his best to drag him away from his work when he has been at it too long, but he doesn't have to _see_ the wife he loved - loves, still, really - and lost. Too often when he looks at Lizzie ( _Young Intrepidity_ , Mulligan calls her with wistful affection), it is a punch in the gut: she has John's look, and she bears Eliza's name.

 

But he must look at her and see  _her_ , because they’re losing her, and that he cannot bear after everything and everyone else he's already lost.

 

"Colonel Hamilton -"

 

"With all due respect, Mrs. Ramsay, there is nothing further to discuss. Our answer is no."


End file.
